With the new display mode it is possible to work on a shader and see the results of code changes almost instantaneously. Shader compilation is triggered automatically by any change of the shader code without interrupting the editing process.

Whenever the shader does not compile successfully an error message is shown as usual at the top of the editor and the render view is cleared. Since compilation is invoked automatically during editing error highlighting in the shader code is disabled to not disrupt the editing flow.

Furthermore, clear color, material colors, light position, blending parameters and custom uniforms are now saved for each shader separately. The new feature vastly improves the ability of switching between different shaders without loosing specific uniform configurations. This is especially helpful when utilizing the full flexibility provided by defining up to 20 custom uniforms per shader.

All custom uniforms that were created before this update are copied automatically to your own shaders (excluding the built-in shaders). After the update all changes made to the custom uniforms are saved to the active shader only.

The latest release of Shaderific includes a new shader for Conway's Game of Life.

The following parameters can be changed using custom uniforms:

Cell size

Enable / disable grid

Enable / disable shadow (when grid is visible)

Invert shadow (when grid is visible)

Three well-known start patterns (Volcano, Glider Gun, Big Glider) are included in the release. You can change the pattern by dragging another texture to the second position in the active textures (please be aware that the framebuffer texture always has to be in the first position).

After changing the start pattern the rendering of the Game of Life shader has to be restarted by resetting the built-in time uniform. This can either be done in the rendering settings or by tapping the stop-button in the tabbar at the bottom of the screen.

Importing Game of Life pattern files

To give you full flexibility in using other start patterns from the web or create your own patterns importing patterns is supported via Dropbox.

To be recognized by Shaderific as a Game of Life pattern file the content has to be well-formed and the file needs to have a specific file extension:

the file only contains dots and stars

the number of characters is the same in every row

the file extension is „.gol“

If you put the file in your Dropbox app folder for Shaderific it will appear in the texture import overview and can be imported like every other image.

When importing a pattern file you don’t need to specify any import settings. The pattern is automatically converted into a regular texture with the dimenions 128 x 128 pixels and is now ready to be used as a new start configuration for the shader.